A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 18

At half-past six on the morning following our arrival at the Homestead, my father opened the stairway door and shouted, just as he had been wont to do in the days when I was a boy on the farm--"Hamlin! Time to get up!" and with a wry grin I called to Zulime and explained, "In our family, breakfast is a full and regular meal at which every member of the household is expected promptly at seven."

It was not yet fully dawn and the thought of rising in a cold room at that time of night was appalling to a city woman, but with heroic resolution Zulime dressed, and followed me down the narrow stairway to the lamp-lit dining-room, where a steaming throng of dishes, containing oatmeal, potatoes, flap-jacks and sausage (supplemented by cookies, doughnuts and two kinds of jam), invited us to start the day with indigestion.

The dim yellow light of the kerosene lamp, the familiar smell of the buckwheat cakes and my father's clarion voice brought back to me very vividly and with a curious pang of mingled pleasure and regret, the corn-husking days when I habitually ate by candlelight in order to reach the field by daybreak. I recalled to my father's memory one sadly-remembered Thanksgiving Day when he forced us all to husk corn from dawn to sunset in order that we might finish the harvest before the snowstorm covered the fallen stalks. "But mother's turkey dinner saved the day," I remarked to Zulime. "Nothing can ever taste so good as that meal. As we came into the house, cold, famished and weary, the smell of the kitchen was celestial."

My mother smiled but father explained in justification, "I could feel a storm in the air and I knew that we had just time to reach the last row if we all worked, and worked hard. As a matter of fact we were all done at four o'clock."

"O, we worked!" I interpolated. "Frank and I had no vote in those days."

During the week which followed most of my relatives, and a good many of the neighbors, called on us, and as a result Zulime spent several highly educational afternoons listening to the candid comments of elderly widows and sharp-eyed old maids. Furthermore, being possessed of a most excellent digestion, she was able to accept the daily invitations to supper, at which rich cakes and home-made jams abounded. She was also called upon to examine "hand-made paintings in oil," which she did with tender care. No one could have detected in her smile anything less than kindly interest in the quaint interior decorations of the homes. Her comment to me was a different matter.

That she was an object of commiseration on the part of the women I soon learned, for Mrs. Dunlap was overheard to say, "She's altogether too good for him" (meaning me), and Mrs. McIlvane, with the candor of a life-long friendship, replied, "That's what I told Belle."

Uncle William, notwithstanding a liking for me, remarked with feeling, "She's a wonder! I don't see how you got her."

To which I replied, "Neither do I."

In setting down these derogatory comments I do not wish to imply that I was positively detested but that I was not a beloved county inst.i.tution was soon evident to my wife. Delegations of school children did not call upon me, and very few of my fellow citizens pointed out my house to travelers--at that time. In truth little of New England's regard for authorship existed in the valley and my head possessed no literary aureole. The fact that I could--and did--send away bundles of ma.n.u.script and get in return perfectly good checks for them, was a miracle of doubtful virtue to my relatives as well as to my neighbors. My money came as if by magic, unasked and unwarranted, like the gold of sunset.

"I don't see how you do it," my Uncle Frank said to me one day, and his tone implied that he considered my authorship a questionable kind of legerdemain, as if I were, somehow, getting money under false pretenses.

Rightly or wrongly, I had never pretended to a keen concern in the "social doings" of my village. Coming to the valley out of regard for my father and mother and not from personal choice, the only folk who engaged my attention were the men and women of the elder generation, rugged pioneer folk who brought down to me something of the humor, the poetry, and the stark heroism of the Border in the days when the Civil War was a looming cloud, and the "Pineries" a limitless wilderness on the north. Men like Sam McKinley, William Fletcher, and Wilbur Dudley retained my friendship and my respect, but the affairs of the younger generation did not greatly concern me. In short, I considered the relationship between them and myself fortuitous.

Absorbed in my writing I was seldom in the mood during my visits to entertain curious neighbors, in fact I had met few people outside my relatives. All this was very ungracious, no doubt, but such had been my att.i.tude for seven years. I came there to work and I worked.

Even now, in the midst of my honeymoon, I wrote busily. Each morning immediately after breakfast I returned to my study, where the ma.n.u.script of a novel (_Her Mountain Lover_) was slowly growing into final shape, but in the afternoons Zulime and I occasionally went sleighing with Dolly and the cutter, or we worked about the house.

It was a peaceful time, with only one thought to stir the pool of my content. I began to realize that the longer we stayed, the harder it would be for my mother to let us go. She could hardly permit her New Daughter to leave the room. She wanted her to sit beside her or to be in the range of her vision all day long. So far from resenting her loss of household authority she welcomed it, luxuriating in the freedom from care which the young wife brought.

This growing reliance upon Zulime made me uneasy. "I cannot, even for mother's sake, ask my city-bred wife to spend the winter in this small snow-buried hamlet," I wrote to my brother, "and, besides, I have planned a wedding trip to Washington and New York."

In announcing to my mother the date of our departure, I said, "We won't be gone long. We'll be back early in the spring."

"See that you do," she replied, but her eyes were deep and dark with instant sadness. She had hoped with childish trust that we would stay all winter with her.

It was beautiful in Neshonoc at this time. Deep, dazzling snows blanketed the hills, and covered the fields, and frequently at sunset or later, after the old people were asleep, Zulime and I went for a swift walk far out into the silent country, rejoicing in the crisp clear air, and in the sparkle of moonbeams on the crusted drifts. At such times the satin sheen of sled-tracks in the road, the squeal of dry flakes under my heel (united with the sound of distant sleigh bells) brought back to me sadly-sweet memories of boyish games, spelling school, and the voices of girls whose laughter had long since died away into silence.

The blurred outlines of the hills, the barking of sentinel dogs at farm-yard gates, and the light from snow-laden cottage windows filled my heart with a dull illogical ache, an emotion which was at once a pleasure and a pain.

O, witchery of the winter night, (With broad moon shouldering to the west), Before my feet the rustling deeps Of untracked snows, in shimmering heaps, Lie cold and desolate and white.

I hear glad girlish voices ring Clear as some softly-stricken string-- (The moon is sailing toward the west), The sleigh-bells clash in homeward flight, With frost each horse's breast is white-- (The moon is falling toward the west)-- "Good night, Lettie!"

"Good night, Ben!"

(The moon is sinking at the west)-- "Good night, my sweetheart,"--Once again The parting kiss, while comrades wait Impatient at the roadside gate, And the red moon sinks _beyond_ the west!

Such moments as these were meeting places of the old and the new, the boy and the man. The wistful, haunting dreams of the past, contended with the warm and glowing fulfillment of the present. For the past a song, for the present the woman at my side!

Whether Zulime had similar memories of her girlhood or not I do not know. She was not given to emotional expression, but she several times declared herself entirely content with our orderly easeful life and professed herself willing to remain in the homestead until spring. "I like it here," she repeated, but I was certain that she liked the city and her own kind, better, and that a longer stay would prove a deprivation and a danger. After all, she was an alien in the Valley,--a gracious and kindly alien, but an alien nevertheless. Her natural habitat was among the studios of Chicago or New York, and my sense of justice would not permit me to take advantage of her loyalty and her womanly self-sacrifice.

"Pack your trunk," I said to her one December day, with an air of high authority. "We are going East in continuation of our wedding trip."

Two days after making this decision we were in Washington, at a grand hotel, surrounded by suave waiters who had abundant leisure to serve us, for the reason that Congress was not in session, and the city was empty of its lobbyists and its law-makers.

The weather was like October and for several days we walked about the streets without thinking of outside wraps. We went at once to the Capitol from whose beautiful terraces we could look across the city, back and upward along our trail, above the snows of Illinois soaring on and up into the far canons of the San Juan Divide, retracing in memory the first half of our wedding journey with a sense of satisfaction, a joy which now took on double value by reason of its contrast to the marble terrace on which we stood. From the luxury of our city surroundings the flaming splendors of the Needle Range appeared almost mystical.

We ate our Christmas dinner in royal isolation, attended by negroes whose dusky countenances shone with holiday desire to make us happy.

With no visitors and no duties we gave ourselves to the business of seeing the Capitol and enjoying the gorgeous sunlight. Zulime, who looked at everything in the spirit of a youthful tourist, was enchanted and I played guide with such enthusiasm as a man of forty could bring to bear. It was a new and pleasant schooling for me, a time which I look back upon with wistful satisfaction, after more than twenty years.

Philadelphia, our next stop, had an especial significance to me (something quite apart from its historical significance). Outwardly professing a keen interest in the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other objects which enthralled my young wife, I was secretly planning to offer Lorimer of _The Post_, the serial rights of my novel _The Eagle's Heart_, and I had an engagement to talk with Edward Bok about a novelette.

Bok, a friend of several years' standing, received us most cordially, and Mrs. Bok, who came in next day to meet us, not only instantly and heartily approved of my wife, but quite openly said so, a fact which added another quality to the triumphal character of our progress. I was certain that all of my other Eastern friends would find her admirable.

We reached New York on New Year's Eve, and the streets were roaring with the customary riot of youth, but in our rooms at the Westminster we were as remote from the tumult as if we had been at the bottom of a Colorado mine. We would have heard nothing of the horns and hootings of the throngs had not Zulime expressed a wish to go forth and mix with them.

With a feeling of disgust of the hoodlums who filled Broadway, I took her as far north as Forty-second Street, but she soon tired of the rude men and their senseless clamor, and gladly returned to our hotel willing to forget it all.

In my diary I find these words, "I am beginning the New Year with two thousand dollars in the bank, and a pending sale which will bring in as much more. I feel pretty confident of a living during the year 1900."

Evidently the disposal of my serial to Lorimer, the results of my deal with Brett, and the growing interest of other publishers in my work had engendered a confidence in the future which I had never before attained--and yet I must admit that most of my prosperity was expected rather than secured, a promise, rather than a fulfillment, and the fact that I permitted Zulime to settle upon a three-room suite in an obscure Hotel on Fifteenth Street, is proof of my secret doubts. Eighteen dollars per week seemed a good deal of money to pay for an apartment.

As I think back to this transaction I am bitten by a kind of remorseful shame. It was such a shabby little lodging for my artist bride, and yet, at the moment, it seemed all that we could safely afford, and she cheerfully made the best of it. Never by word or sign did she hint that its tiny hall and its dingy and unfashionable furnishings were unworthy of us both, on the contrary she went ahead with shining face.

One extravagance I did commit, one that I linger upon with satisfaction--I forced her to choose a handsome coat instead of a plain one. It was a long graceful garment of a rich brown color, an "Individual model" the saleslady called it. It was very becoming to my wife--at any rate I found it so--but the price was sixty-five dollars--"marked down from eighty-five" the saleslady said. Neither of us had ever worn a coat costing more than twenty-five dollars and to pay almost three times as much even for a beautiful "creation" like this was out of the question--and my considerate young wife decided against it with a sigh.

I was in reckless mood. "We will take it," I said to the saleswoman.

"Oh no! We can't afford it!" protested Zulime in high agitation. "It is impossible!" She looked scared and weak.

"You may do up the old coat," I went on in exalted tone. "My wife will wear the new one."

In a tremor of girlish joy and grat.i.tude Zulime walked out upon the street wearing the new garment, and the expression of her face filled me with desire to go on amazing her. She had owned so few pretty things in her life that I took a keen pleasure in scaring her with sudden presents. I bought a crescent-shaped brooch set with small diamonds which cost one hundred dollars--Oh, I was coming on!

[She is wearing these jewels yet and she says she loves them--but as I think back to that brown cloak I am not so sure that her approval was without misgiving. It may be that she secretly hated that coat for it was an unusual color, and while its lines were graceful in my eyes it may have been "all out of style."--What became of it, finally, I am unable to say. No matter, it expressed for me a n.o.ble sentiment and it shall have a place on this page with the Oriental brooch and the amethyst necklace.]

Humble as our quarters were we rejoiced in distinguished visitors.

William Dean Howells called upon us almost immediately and so did Richard Watson Gilder, Edmund Clarence Stedman, John Burroughs, and many other of my valued, old-time friends. Furthermore, with a courage at which I now marvel at, Zulime announced that we would be "at home" every afternoon, and thereafter our tiny sitting-room was often crowded with her friends--for she had begun to find out many of her artist acquaintances. In fact, we were forever discovering people she had known in Paris. It seemed to me that she had met the entire American Colony during her four years in France.

My social and domestic interests quite cut me off from my club, and we joked about this. "I am now one of the newly-weds," I admitted, "and my absence from the club is expected. Members invariably desert the club during the first year or two of their married life, but they all come back!--Sooner or later, they drop in for lunch or while wifey is away, and at last are indistinguishable from the bachelors."

Mrs. James A. Herne, who had meant so much to me in my Boston days, was one of our very first callers, and no one among all my friends established herself more quickly in my wife's regard. Katharine's flame-like enthusiasm, her never-failing Irish humor, and her quick intelligence, made her a joyous inspiration, and whilst she and Zulime compared experiences like a couple of college girls, I sat and smiled with a kind of proprietary pride in both of them.

Fortunately my wife approved of my a.s.sociates. "You have a delightful circle," she said one night as we were on our way home from a dinner with a group of distinguished literary folk.

Her remark comforted me. Having no money with which to hire cabs or purchase opera tickets, I could at least share with her the good friendships I had won, confidently, believing that she would gain approval,--which she did. Not all of my a.s.sociates were as poor as I (some of them, indeed, lived in houses of their own), but they were mostly concerned with the arts in some form, and with such people Zulime was entirely at ease.

With a lecture to deliver in Boston I asked her to go with me. "I cannot forego the pleasure of showing you about 'the Hub,'" I urged. "I want Hurd and other of my faithful friends of former days to know you. We'll take rooms at the Parker House which used to fill me with silent awe. I want to play the part, for a day or two, of the successful author."

As she had never seen Boston, she joyfully consented, and the most important parts of my grandiose design were carried out. We took rooms at the hotel in which I first met Riley, and from there we sent out cards to several of my acquaintances. Hurd, who was still Literary Editor of the _Transcript_, came at once to call, and so did Flower of the _Arena_, but for the most part Zulime and I did the calling for she was eager to see the homes and the studios of my artist friends.

By great good fortune, James A. Herne was playing "Sag Harbor" at one of the theaters, and as I had told Zulime a great deal about "Sh.o.r.e Acres"